00:04I had such a fascination with Pompeii when I was growing up.
00:07I think I remember doing a whole pamphlet of school on Vesuvius and all that.
00:11So stuff like this just...
00:12Do you still have it?
00:13It might be at home somewhere, I'm sure it is.
00:16But I know, Tom, this kind of span from you going, what, 1998 with all your friends and everything.
00:22I don't know how much you believe in the butterfly effect or maybe branches, if you ever...
00:27Branches in the timeline.
00:28No, on a timeline.
00:29Do you think we would be sitting here right now had you not made that trip in 1998?
00:33Sounds like it was a Nexus event.
00:34It sounds like it was.
00:35Probably not, you know.
00:37I mean, maybe if we were, it would be different.
00:40Yeah.
00:42And all the things I know about Pompeii, I'd be learning for the first time.
00:46I do think it was formative for me in so many ways.
00:49It was the most fantastic trip.
00:51It was, you know, it was in its own way, ancient history.
00:55I didn't have a mobile phone.
00:56We didn't have the internet.
00:58There were no, I didn't have an email address.
01:01And so being in Naples on my own with two friends in 1998, we felt like we were exploring.
01:07You know, we were not, we wrote postcards home.
01:10I miss those names.
01:11We had maps, you know, we just, it was just before technology and it was very formative and lots of
01:18my first trip away with no adult supervision.
01:21So suddenly you're having to just for the first time organize yourself in a different country speaking a different language.
01:27So massive human new experience.
01:31World Cup summer, France 98, watched the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the final in Italy that summer.
01:39But crucially, I suppose, I was at the end of my lower six at school, about to do my A
01:44-levels.
01:45I had chosen English literature, theatre studies, Latin and Greek.
01:49And up until that point, I loved Latin.
01:52I loved the Greek myths.
01:53Thesis and the Minotaur, the Twelve Labours of Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts, you know, Perseus and Medusa.
02:00All those great stories.
02:01The Odyssey.
02:01I loved the Odyssey.
02:02I learned a lot of those.
02:03It's like, take me back as well.
02:04I'm like, wow.
02:05But it would all, my point is, it was always just in books.
02:08Yeah.
02:08And suddenly, to being in Pompeii in 98 and walking, I don't quite know what I was expecting, but I
02:15was, I was not sideways by it.
02:18Hold on, do you guys do this so that it coincided with the World Cup again just because you had,
02:22like,
02:22All the projects are going to be planned around the World Cup.
02:24Every, every, every four years, it'll just be, yeah, World Cup time.
02:27What did you guys particularly nerd out on?
02:30Because, like you say, you are very interested.
02:32Obviously, it became a scene in Loki as well.
02:35Like, it is something that you guys are very interested in.
02:38What did you particularly nerd out on, maybe that you learned or that, you know, was, got you fascinated?
02:43Because I, last night, learned that we can outrun lava.
02:47And now it's ruined, and now it's ruined playing The Floor is Lava with my niece and nephews forever.
02:52I would have wanted to test, I would not want to test that theory, though.
02:55I still would want to be very far away.
02:57I actually really do.
02:58I kind of do want to test it.
03:00I mean, yeah, it's good to know you can outrun it, though.
03:02You have, you cannot outrun a pyroclastic flow, which is what the kind of avalanche of ash
03:09and pumice and superheated rock was that came down from Vesuvius.
03:12That's what I learned.
03:13Yeah.
03:14I suppose what, can I tell you what I geeked out on?
03:16I really want to throw to you because you hadn't been before.
03:18I really believed that it was, that Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and immediately, instantly,
03:28blanketed the city.
03:29Like we did with Loki.
03:30Yeah.
03:31Buried it for 1,800 years until it was discovered by archaeologists.
03:34I did not know that it erupted around lunchtime in August.
03:40And then the next day, it was buried.
03:43So suddenly, you've got a window of what we would think of as 24 hours.
03:47It's like kind of at school we were taught.
03:49It was immediate.
03:50That's what I remember.
03:51And you think, well, they can, well, hang on.
03:53They've got time.
03:54They've suddenly got like a day in which to do different things.
03:57And because of where the research is now and the complexity and the rigor with which this
04:03research has been done by historians and archaeologists, you can essentially retrace the footsteps
04:08of individual people through the city, through those 24 hours, whether they stayed or left,
04:13whether they went back into the town to be with their mothers or sons or families to get
04:18their belongings, whether they helped organize people into the boats in Herculaneum and get
04:24them into the water on the Bay of Naples and away from it.
04:28So suddenly it becomes incredibly dynamic and propulsive because you've got this ticking
04:34clock and a wall of volcanic debris that's shooting 20 miles into the sky, into space,
04:44which they can see before it falls.
04:46And that was the thing I really noted out on.
04:48There were people who made it out.
04:49I was blown away by just the power of the forum.
04:54And when you walk into the forum, it's the first place that we go into.
04:58And that's that moment in the show when Tom's talking to Sarita, our disaster psychologist,
05:03saying, it's there.
05:04You're saying, maybe.
05:05Why aren't people leaving?
05:07The scene, like I mentioned, in Loki is probably one of the most memorable from the whole of
05:12that series.
05:13But you didn't actually film that one in Pompeii, did you?
05:16We did not.
05:16So did you, when you went to Pompeii this time, recreate any of those Loki scenes?
05:21I can still remember those lines, though.
05:23I think, mehi nomen est loci.
05:26Praefectus consilii at tempus mutandem.
05:30De futuri, like something, something.
05:33Istemons ignis persaicula vomitoris.
05:37It's about this mountain's about to erupt.
05:40And then I have to check if I'm from the future.
05:41Well, I remember woos omnos.
05:45Was it right?
05:45Yes, woos omnos.
05:46Yes, morituri estes.
05:48Yeah.
05:48Such a lovely thing to say.
05:49I know, I think there was some, there was some hidden Easter eggs that our production designer
05:56on this, Natalie, had hidden on the walls in the recreations of Pompeii.
06:02There might be some horns hidden around on the set.
06:05There were lots of goats in Pompeii.
06:07There were lots of goats, yeah.
06:08They all had goats.
06:09So, no, we didn't do it just out of respect for the city, actually.
06:12Fair enough, yeah.
06:13But it was, yeah, it was having done that scene.
06:17And we were in Atlanta, Georgia.
06:18Yeah.
06:19And it was a set.
06:20With real goats, I might add.
06:21Yes, real goats, yeah.
06:23Be free, my horn friends.
06:24Be free.
06:26So it had an impact on you that you could remember it all practically word for word as well.
06:31Yeah.
06:32It was a happy day for me.
06:33It was a confluence of all my passions and interests.
06:37He helped us re-translate the lines because we'd gotten it wrong in the script, so, yeah.
06:42I mean, I spent three years on it at university.
06:45I felt like it was my, if I didn't, you know what I mean, it was my duty, so.
06:48Yeah.
06:48My teachers would have been like, Tom, come on.
06:51Mary Beard would be calling.
06:52You continue to surprise us all the time.
06:53Listen, what can't you do, Tom, at this point?
06:55So much.
06:56I look forward to finding out.
06:58There is a lot.
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